Free Dirty Laundry by Rhys Ford Page A

Wong to chase down.” The hot tea did nothing to wash away the sweet burn of the braised jalapenos, but it was enough to take away some of the sting. “I don’t think Madame Sun has anything to do with this shit, but something’s up. My gut keeps nagging at me.”
    “The same gut that took a couple of bullets?”
    “Those hit my ribs and chest. My stomach escaped unscathed,” I retorted. “I’ve already promised Jae I wouldn’t get shot again. Anything I find, I’m throwing at Wong and then walking away.”
    “Just remember you said that, Princess, because if not, he’s going to stomp your balls to dust,” Bobby warned. “Let me make a couple of calls and see what’s up. You focus on getting into your boy’s pants and forget about stirring up trouble. I’ll call you later.”
    “Don’t mind me if I don’t pick up.” My order arrived on the table, and I slipped the waitress enough cash to pay for the meal and leave a healthy tip. “I’m going to go feed Jae and see if I can’t take his mind off of work for a bit.”
     
     
    T HE drive to Jae’s studio was long enough to make me more impatient to see him. Traffic tightened around me until the Rover and I felt like a blood cell trying to squeeze down a hardened artery. From the clusterfuck at one intersection, it looked like Los Angeles ate only fried foods covered in cheese and an extra helping of bacon. I maneuvered the Rover around one of the bloated ground zeppelins the city called a transit bus, broke from the pack, and zipped down a side street.
    Forced to move following an explosion that leveled his old place, Jae found a new studio a few miles from my building. With the cost of housing in Los Angeles and his refusal to move in with me, he ended up in a former auto parts store someone converted into a triplex. The store’s parking lot had been large enough to build a narrow apartment building, but there was enough room behind the thick-walled triplex to park. Windows cut up high into the cinder block walls were a feeble attempt to aerate the building, but the city was not known for its cool winds. Luckily, the landlord left the industrial-grade air conditioner on the place’s roof, or I’d have packed up Jae’s things and tossed him into the back of my SUV.
    I parked the Rover behind Jae’s Explorer and locked the car up. The entrance to his place was near the street, a small gesture of privacy given by the wooden slat fence built along the sidewalk. He’d taken the long rectangular space at the back of the building, a good choice, given the two square studios in the front were nearly shoved into the butt of the apartments in front.
    Faded yellow and red paint flaked off the side of the building, a reminder of its former glory providing antifreeze and oil to the masses. A scatter of ash sat near the front door, evidence of a troubled Jae using the small patio area as a smoking spot. The faint odor of cloves clung to the space, a fragrant and recent echo of my lover’s infrequent bad habit.
    As much as I adored Jae, he was next to impossible to get to answer the front door if he was busy. I’d had entire conversations with him sitting next to me as he processed photos on his laptop, only to have him owlishly blink at me when I asked him a direct question. While he spent most of his time at my place, the studio was his niche of independence, somewhere he could slink off to and work without my intrusion.
    Well— usually without my intrusion.
    I tested the doorknob and was surprised to find it open. Jae was a habitual locker of knobs. Even the bathroom wasn’t safe from his compulsive barricading the world out, but stranger things had happened than him leaving his front door unlocked.
    He’d fallen for me, after all.
    I opened the door to the heady fragrance of green tea and buttered popcorn. It’d been a while since I’d been to the studio. We spent all of our time at my place—our place, really, since his cat seemed to have gained